From icy Arctic to golden cheer

A few years ago, the Head Gardener and I visited our son in Dunedin at about this time of year. During that time, we ventured up to the Duntroon/Earthquakes area to look at some remarkable fossils and Maori cave art.

The landscape along the various valleys of North Otago was amazing, but there was a surreal quality to much of it, caused by the outbreak of intensive dairy farming in selected areas.

The region is largely very dry, with porous limestone and relatively recent gravels forming much of the soil and, by the end of the warm summer, most of the paddocks are usually mouse coloured. But scattered among these burnt paddocks were outcrops of outrageously green fields, where the combination of irrigation and fertiliser betrayed the presence of dairying.

This year, our garden looks a bit like that, the lawn has died off, except for a small margin of error at the edges where they receive some spill over from watering the gardens, and the only green is in the garden beds.

I am a bit worried about how dry even some of the flower beds are though, as I want to have a bit of a daffodil blitz this year.

Although I am a great iris lover, I am also very taken with daffodils, and have a large number of different types growing in the garden and in pots, and this year I want to expand that number a lot, even aiming for a host of golden daffodils perhaps.

If good, strong-growing yellow daffodils are what you are looking for there are a couple of older varieties you should keep an eye out for - Malvern City and Carlton. Both are gold on gold forms, have golden petals and cups and are reliable flowering forms that are long lasting.

Malvern City is very early in the season and is quite tall, growing to about 50cm at full height. Carlton is a little later and is a bit chunkier, flowering at 40cm, but is perhaps a little hardier. They will both do very well as cut flowers.

If you are looking for more contrast, you could try one of the varieties with white petals and golden cups, as the colour contrast makes them stand out well in the garden. For early in the season, you should look out for Moneymaker, which has cream petals and a large golden cup and always looks bright in the garden. The petals are probably a little misshapen if you are trying to win medals at the flower show, but for garden value it is great.

I have grown Ice Follies for a few years now, a lovely white daffodil with white petals and cream cups. I have found it to be a reliable flowering form, growing about 35cm high and very hardy in the wind and rain.

If you wanted more colour from this kind of form, you should try Orange Ice Follies, which despite its name is not really orange-cupped but rather deep gold toned.

Small-flowered double daffodils are, of course, very popular, none more so than the exquisitely scented Erlicheer, which can even be in flower as early as May in some gardens. To be brutally honest it is no great shakes to look at, but it more than makes up for its lack of elegance with the powerful scent it carries.

At the opposite end of the season, Cheerfuless provides much the same scent on a slightly tidier flower. Golden Cheerfulness is even better I think, although the colour is a little light to really be called golden, at times it is almost chartreuse, but this moderately-sized daffodil is one of my favourites.

The Head Gardener is a great fan of the pink-cupped daffodils, and we grow a few of them. My favourite among these is probably Accent, even though it is not the pinkest (certainly not the luscious pink you find in tall bearded irises).

The cups are more properly called salmon pink, or perhaps even a peachy orange, but this plant is just so reliable, and the flowers hold their colour so well, I would not be without this in my large border.

The Head Gardener does not really have a good site for her daffodils, as her main garden is very much shaded now, but she still grows some of her beloved pink cups, including Rose Wonder, which has a distinctive two-tone pink cup, darker at the edge. It is a very strong grower, and, like many pink forms, is a late season variety. I like the look of Kathleen, a newer variety with a small soft pink trumpet that is said to be earlier than most other pink forms.

I am not usually a great fan of white flowers and actively dislike most white gardens but I like most pure white daffodils, through from the early flowering paper whites, with their dainty, scented flowers, through to the larger and later garden varieties.

Mount Hood is a great variety that opens with pure white petals and huge lemon cups that gradually fade through cream to be pure white by the time the flowers are nearing their end.

Arctic Bay is another good form, with white cups of great substance that last well through the flowering season.

Many gardeners go for some of the more unusual daffodil types, such as doubles and split coronas, but I have to say they generally leave me cold. The doubles (apart from the smaller flowered types) all seem messy, with petals flying out at all sorts of odd angles, and the split coronas look equally odd.

These are flowers where the cup has been "split" and usually pushed back so it lies flat against the petals, and the more recent ones do not look so bad, as they are more regular. Among those to look out for are Orangery with a bright orange corona against creamy petals, and Love Call with even more orange corona against bright white petals.